Railroads say they’re making safety changes to reduce derailments after fiery Ohio crash

OMAHA, Neb.– The changes the railroads announced after last year’s fiery crash in East Palestine, Ohio, have not yet made a big difference, statistics show, and reforms have stalled in Congress.

A few key measures in the latest Federal Railroad Administration statistics, including the total number of train accidents, worsened in the first eleven months of last year compared to the same period in previous years. Meanwhile, there were some improvements in other figures, such as total derailments.

The overall picture is that rail safety has not improved significantly in recent years – and as the Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine last February 3 and others demonstrate, just one derailment can be disastrous if hazardous chemicals are involved. The small town near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border is still struggling to recover a year later.

US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said there had been a meaningful 15% drop in the number of derailments along mainline rail lines after Congress responded to a number of high-profile train accidents involving crude oil in the early 2010s. “Progress has stalled as derailments and preventable incidents occur at an unacceptable pace,” Buttigieg said, urging Congress to enact reforms now.

The rail industry is defending its reputation as the safest way to transport hazardous materials overland — something the head of the National Transportation Safety Board agreed with in recent testimony in the House of Representatives — even as officials acknowledge that railroads need to improve safety keep improving. And the trade group Association of American Railroads says most of the measures the railroads promised last spring weren’t completed until late last year, so they haven’t yet been reflected in the numbers.

Safety statistics for the six largest freight railroads that dominate the industry are mixed: Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific, CPKC, Canadian National and BNSF.

For most of 2023, the total number of train accidents rose slightly to 4,845, including more than 600 deaths.

Comparing 2022 and 2023, the total number of derailments decreased by approximately 2.6% – but nationally there were still almost three derailments per day. Railroads point out that roughly two-thirds of these accidents occur at low speeds on railroad property and do not cause significant damage.

Last year there were 53 major derailments that caused damage exceeding $1 million, an increase of almost 33%. Norfolk Southern has said the cost of the East Palestine derailment has already exceeded $1.1 billion, and that total will continue to grow with cleanup costs and lawsuit settlements.

The total number of accidents caused by the same problem as the eastern Ohio derailment more than doubled nationally last year to 19. Bearing failures due to overheating are still a small fraction, accounting for less than 2% of all accidents.

All thirteen rail unions have sounded the alarm about the dangers of the lean operating model, which has cut roughly a third of jobs in the rail sector. Unions say that as a result of these cuts, inspections are being rushed – or carried out by less qualified workers – and anyone who remains is overworked. They also say companies may neglect to perform preventive maintenance.

“East Palestine was not a surprise,” said Jared Cassity, safety chief at the SMART-TD union, which represents conductors. “The next East Palestine, at least at the rate we’re going, is to some extent imminent.”

The railroads are defending their operating model — which relies on fewer trains that have become much longer — by simply helping them make the best use of their locomotives, tracks and crews without compromising safety, and the Federal Railroad Administration says that safety statistics have not improved significantly. worse since they started using it.

But Tony Cardwell, leader of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division union, which represents track maintenance workers, said the railways are under pressure to cut costs from “vulture capitalist” investors.

This past year, the railroads agreed to offer paid sick leave to most of their employees for the first time and improve the way engineers and conductors are scheduled to help reduce fatigue.

Last year, the major freight railroads installed hundreds of new track detectors to detect overheated bearings, as part of their goal to add about 1,000 nationwide to make the average distance between them 15 miles in most places.

All railroads will now stop trains when bearings detect a gap of more than 170 degrees to the outside air, and there are new standards to help them better track when bearings start to heat up to fix problems sooner.

Railroads have also installed complex gantries filled with cameras, other sensors and advanced detectors to spot problems along the way.

Norfolk Southern has also taken additional steps, such as hiring a nuclear power industry consultant to review its safety practices, creating a pilot program to allow workers to anonymously report safety concerns and changing train-building rules to reduce the weight of heavy better balance cars and hazardous materials.

“We will always strive to improve safety,” Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw told The Associated Press. “There’s not one thing you do. It’s a lot of different things.”

The railroad safety bill has yet to be voted on in the full Senate — or even heard in the House of Representatives. The measure would require federal standards for these track detectors, increase inspections by qualified workers and require two people on each freight train.

Ian Jefferies of the AAR trade group says the railroads have not opposed the bill outright, but they are challenging several provisions, such as the two-man crew requirement and locomotive inspection rules. They say such changes have nothing to do with the cause of the wreck in East Palestine. After all, that train had a crew of three, and the power car – not a locomotive – was at fault. The railways also want a cost-benefit analysis of the rules to be made.

House Republicans say they want to wait for the final NTSB report before taking action so they can be sure any new regulations are directly related to the cause of the East Palestine derailment. The report won’t be released until sometime this summer.

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who was part of the bipartisan group that introduced the bill, blames the railroad industry lobby for stalling the bill’s progress.

“It depends on the strength of the rail industry. I mean the fact that Norfolk Southern and other railroads have continued to oppose this bill,” Brown said. “They have always put profits before people.”